


three count delay

by littledust



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-30
Updated: 2013-12-30
Packaged: 2018-01-06 19:27:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1110636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littledust/pseuds/littledust
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her new hair is ragged enough that she doesn't look like Jo and she doesn't look like her mama. Jo sweeps the last of her old self into the trash. Walks away from the mirror. She's got shirts to scrub and demons to track.</p>
            </blockquote>





	three count delay

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Gunshy" by Liz Phair. Written as part of a "finishing old WIPs" project.

Jo's mama dies fighting demons. They say it's the way she would have wanted to go. Jo, jaw clenched, kicks dirt over the ashes of her former life so she doesn't hit anybody. Ellen Harvelle would have wanted to go at ninety-five in her bed, kept alive by determination to see her daughter safe and sheer cussed spite. Anyone saying different is a fool or a liar or both.

Turns out cutting your hair with a knife isn't as dramatic as they make it look like in the movies. Mostly it's Jo sawing through chunks of blonde until she looks like a disaster, but that's kind of the point. She read in a book somewhere that women would cut their hair to show their grief. She likes the idea of wearing your wounds so the world knows without asking. She learned not to ask hunters about all their scars; now it's waitresses who aren't going to talk to her except to ask if she wants another cup of coffee. The knife falls into the sink, and she grips the porcelain sides like they can anchor her to the world.

Her new hair is ragged enough that she doesn't look like Jo and she doesn't look like her mama. Jo sweeps the last of her old self into the trash. Walks away from the mirror. She's got shirts to scrub and demons to track.

*

Texas is a long hot sky to her. Jo sleeps in the bed of the pickup truck she bought in Oklahoma. She likes waking up to a sky caught fire; reminds her that the world is coming to an end. She peels the wrapper off a protein bar and chews. Her eyes are grainy and her face is dry. Been a couple days since her last shower, but Jo likes the grit; it makes her feel like she's working even when she's just ambling through town, hoping that she's dug up another real ghost story.

This one sounds like a bust, like a string of bizarre coincidences, but Jo's got a fat wallet from a job that actually paid, and the thoughts are starting up again, the thoughts that chase themselves around her brain until she wants to put a gun in her mouth. She hits the bar with a violence she used to see in the desperate hunters, the burnouts who were on their way to a messy end.

She loses count of the tequila shots. All that's on her mind is a blur of colors and the vague outlines of the argument she's gonna have with the bartender when she wants more. There's salt and citrus still on her lips, stinging in the cracks. She closes her eyes to taste it better.

When she opens them again there's a piece of her past sitting next to her, beer in hand. She opens with, "Fuck you," which she thinks is pretty friendly, all things considered.

Dean Winchester doesn't flinch. Jo's never been able to work her way under his skin, but she's surprised by how much she wants to hurt him. Doesn't matter that she's heard rumors all through the hunting community about the kind of curse he's under, doesn't matter that he looks like he's been through hell and back. For several ugly seconds, Jo's finger curls around an imaginary trigger. Then she's not feeling much of anything, and that surprises her, too.

He lays a twenty on the bar. Says, "Buy you a drink?" like she's sure he has a thousand times for a thousand different girls. Like he doesn't even know her name.

"Jo Harvelle." She chokes on her last name, can barely force it past the tears in her throat, tears that taste like tequila shots. She gets up, swaying, and feels his hand close around her wrist. It's warm.

He reaches towards her with his other hand as if to cup her face, but instead he puts it back down, lets go of her wrist. He looks bone-deep weary, sad in ways that look scarcely human. It's like looking into a mirror, or maybe she's his. They've been shattered enough times.

Sobriety is lapping at her in waves. "Where's Sam?" she asks, trying not to think of low voices and rope.

"Doesn't want to watch me waste the rest of my life." Dean's laugh is bitter. It makes her smile.

"Think I'll have a whiskey sour." Her eyes dare him to comment, but he doesn't say anything, just waves the bartender over to order their drinks.

*

She's drunker than Dean is but she stands orphan strong for him to lean on as she fumbles through his pockets for his room key. He mumbles some innuendo and she wonders if she could finally do it: have sex with Dean Winchester. She's lost the little girl crush but none of the attraction. Then he kisses her, tongue curling around hers, and she's not wondering anymore. She's still scrabbling at the door when it opens.

"Dean, where--" Jo hears Sam's voice and stays attached to Dean's face. Different hair, maybe he won't know her. She doesn't want to have to look at anyone who might understand her. Dean knows what she's been through but she thinks Sam might try to help her.

No wonder the demons all want him.

"For God's sake--Sorry, miss, but--" Sam says, and then there are large hands pulling her away from Dean and she remembers _helpless scared trapped_ and the gun in her hands is her only safety now. She doesn't know how it happened, but her gun's trained on Sam and his hands are in the air.

In the quiet, she watches Sam recognize her. Watches the memories trickle back, and the shame. She can hear Dean breathing behind her, but she knows he knows she knows he's too drunk to get the gun before she can shoot.

"Got any holy water for me to drink?" Sam asks, gaze flicking from gun to girl and back again. He licks his upper lip, just a bare flick of pink tongue.

The inelegance of the gesture reassures her. Demons are always wanting to be sexy; maybe it's the thrill of having a body. Jo lowers the gun and then cracks back with her elbow, catching Dean as he moves to disarm her.

"Christ!"

"We turned up a couple of false leads," Sam says, like his brother isn't doubled over next to Jo, pain scrawled across his face. "Need a place to sleep off the booze?"

And that's the thing about Sam Winchester: he looks like a guy you can trust, regardless of whether he's been possessed by demons.

"I claim the other bed," Jo says. She's got a bottle of salt in her purse. Before she goes to sleep, she makes a circle around the bed. The grains of salt catch the parking lot lights and gleam pure against the carpet.

*

Jo sleeps long and dreamless. She wakes with her head stuffed full of cotton, the price of sleeping a handful of her exhaustion away. She digs the heels of her hands into her cheekbones, palms covering her eyes. The light hurts. Even the hiss of the shower going in the bathroom hurts. When she lowers her hands, Sam is sitting on the edge of her bed.

"You crossed the salt line," she croaks.

"Yeah." Sam stares at his lap, where his hands lie broad. "Dean's showering away the hangover."

She unwinds her legs from the sheets. "Thought he didn't get 'em."

"Yeah." When Sam raises his gaze, it's Jo's turn to look down at her lap. "Sorry about your mom. She was--sorry. It's the fucking worst."

_Then you coulda come to her funeral,_ Jo doesn't say, because at least Sam Winchester gets it, or near enough. She stands up, feet hitting cool floor. He stepped over the salt lines rather than break them. Jo twists around to brush Sam's bangs off his forehead, then kisses what she finds there. Sam closes his eyes and takes it, a benediction in the form of soft lips and lingering tequila smell.

He's all right. Jo says, "I'm gonna brush my teeth. Be out in a minute."

*

She does scrub her teeth with somebody else's toothbrush. Like either Winchester has room to criticize. They know what living on the road's like. She runs the minty bristles over teeth and across tongue, then spits as many times in the sink as she can stand.

"No more drinking, ever," Jo says, and finally lets herself look at the figure huddled under the shower spray.

"Sure," Dean says. "You and me both."

She wipes her palms on her dirty jeans. "You kissed me."

"Yeah."

"If I climb in there, will you kiss me again?"

It's like staring at him through a rain shower, if rain fell inside shitty motel bathrooms with mildewed tiles. The water rolls down skin and muscle. You could get lost looking, miss the scars and the circles under his eyes.

"Jo," he says, and stops. _Go home_ is what you say to girls who live somewhere. He turns his face away instead. Her heart clenches in hatred. Hypocritical. They're both cowards in the face of death.

She does it anyway: kisses him with all the anger of a teenage crush frustrated and a grownup heart crushed. Dean goes still under the force of her mouth. His breath catches when she draws his lower lip between her teeth, but that's all. That's enough.

Jo pulls her head out of the shower, back under the bare glare of the bathroom light. She walks straight out, tosses a goodbye to Sam over her shoulder. Water drips from the ragged ends of her hair. It'll dry soon.


End file.
